Testing – support of trainings and increased qualification of the employees

Manager's FTE dropped

to 15%

Medicinal Representatives' FTE

lower by 40%

Sample Team Calculation

team size:

6 Medicinal
Representatives (MSR)

1 Product Manager (PM)

number of work days
per year
20

number of tests
conducted per month
190

Situation of the Client

The goal of the company is to establish a highly skilled team of professionals the customers will consider experienced partners to deal with their requests. Due to this, the company requires the employees to participate in regular trainings and upgrades in qualification in the specialised areas. The representatives receive learning materials which they study on their own and if necessary, they consult their issues with their managers.

The representatives undergo regular testing to verify their knowledge. The test content is being prepared by the product manager and is based on the learning materials received, focusing on data necessary for specialised communication with the customers. The testing itself is performed at team meetings with the team members filling in their tests there – under supervision of the product manager.

The product manager evaluates the tests and informs the failed team members that they will have to take the test again. After the processing of the test results, a summary report in order to set the next steps for further trainings is established.

Problem at Hand

The product manager prepares the tests in a document on the computer or in paper form. There are usually only 2-4 test versions, as there is no time to prepare unique tests for the individual representatives, eliminating potential cheating.

The representatives learn for the test using their learning materials. They do not include formulations of correct and incorrect answers in order to make preparing forbidden aids for the test more difficult.

It is necessary for all the team members to be present at the team meeting, so they do not share the correct answers with their colleagues. There are only few occasions during the year when all the field force members are on one place and the testing takes away time necessary to prepare for the new sales cycle.

The test evaluation is being done manually. In order to make this process faster, the test use multiple choice questions (a/b/c/d/). They do not allow adding words or sentences. The report is being processed to the prepared document template manually, as well.

The result history is available only in form of final reports which need to be summarized for that purpose.

Request of the Client

The company needs to make the work of the product manager faster and easier and reduce the burden of manual work. The representatives should be able to prepare for the testing by means of trial tests simulating real testing. At the same time, the company needs a unique test for each employee and eliminate cheating, so that the testing results match the actual knowledge of the employee.

In order to make the team meetings more efficient, they need to implement remote testing. The testing should be conducted outside their regular meetings, saving the precious time to discuss important work-related topics.

The test result processing should be automated and the reports need to be adjusted based on the roles and decision-making competence of the recipients.

Solution

The product manager sets up the test parameters:

list of testing participants
selection of product/field of testing
duration of the test (in minutes)
number of trial and real repetitions per participant
time period in which the test is available to be taken online
number of questions of the test taken of the total number of pre-defined questions
method of mixing the answers

Then, he/she shall add the list of questions:

adding a list of answers to the questions and marking the correct one
defining the answer type of the questions (multiple choice, text)
setting the indicator of mandatory questions, i.e. whether it is to be shown to every testing participant

Testing results:

the final reports are adjusted to the role of the recipient and submitted to the e-mail inboxes of the managers
managers are able to see the report in a contingency table

Representatives take the test and go through the questions:

if allowed, they can take a trial test
they see only the result of the test as a whole and not the individual correct answers
after the trial test, they take the real test – they will always see a different test structure – different questions and answers in different order (except the mandatory questions)
after passing the test successfully, the participants receive information on their results and a certificate to their e-mail inbox

Result

After deploying the online testing system and trial tests, the representatives became better prepared for work with the customers. Repeating the trial tests serves as a certain form of e-learning, too. The tests are strict and eliminate cheating. The employees need to study the topics and there is no way around that, as the tests are unique and the answer order is being mixed by the system.

The product manager has more time to prepare the tests on the specialised level and focus on further education of the representatives.

The tests do not have to be taken at group meetings and are available online in the defined time period.

The administrative burden of the employees dropped significantly. The representatives need only 40% of the previously required time for the testing and the product manager needs only 15% of the previously required time related to testing.

Another major benefit is the new level of testing reliability and 100% focus on defining the strategy and tactics to meet the team objectives at the company meetings.